National Manpower Survey, 1973-1976 (ICPSR 7675)

Citation

Bureau of Social Science Research, Inc. National Manpower Survey, 1973-1976. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 1992-02-16. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR07675.v1

Summary

This data collection contains information from a series of
national surveys, conducted simultaneously across the criminal justice
system, to ascertain national manpower strengths and goals, agency
information and characteristics, and attitudes of the agency heads
during the period 1973-1976. The National Manpower Survey was
undertaken to assess the adequacy of existing federal, state, and
local training and education programs meeting current personnel needs
in various law enforcement and criminal justice functions and
operations. The study intended to project future personnel and
training needs, by occupation, in relation to anticipated availability
of qualified personnel in order to assess the future adequacy of
training and educational resources. It also sought to establish "needs
priorities" as a basis for future training and academic assistance
programs to be funded by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The study
design systematically covered the personnel needs in all state and
local governmental agencies that were part of the law enforcement and
criminal justice system. Sectors within the system included: (1) law
enforcement, consisting of police departments and sheriff's agencies,
ranging in size from one-person constabularies to large city
departments employing 20,000 or more individuals, (2) corrections,
including both adult and juvenile correctional institutions and
agencies, and (3) the judicial process, including a wide range of
courts with varying jurisdictions and scope, district attorneys or
prosecutors' offices, and public defenders' offices. For this study,
the Bureau of Social Science Research was responsible for the
acquisition and assessment of existing statistical data as well as the
design and execution of systematic mail surveys of agencies,
officials, and employees within the law enforcement/criminal justice
system. Nine nationwide surveys were directed to executives in
criminal justice agencies, including chiefs of police (in both large
and small departments), sheriffs (in both large and small
departments), chief prosecutors, chief defenders, court
administrators, wardens of adult correctional facilities, directors of
juvenile correctional facilities, and chief probation and parole
officers. Two additional surveys were sent to general and appellate
jurisdiction courts. In the nine surveys directed to criminal justice
executives, the instruments asked respondents for (1) an overall
assessment of manpower problems, including personnel categories in
which critical shortages might exist, and total personnel required to
fulfill all agency duties and responsibilities, (2) desired and actual
entry level standards, as well as entry level and in-service training
content and requirements, (3) demographic, educational, training, and
occupational background information about the executive respondent,
(4) opinions about major obstacles to effectiveness and attitudes
toward various issues such as team policing, plea bargaining, and
computer-assisted case management, and (5) a fact sheet section
dealing with agency employment by occupational category, salaries, and
workloads. Each of the remaining two surveys was a census of general
and appellate jurisdiction courts designed to yield basic statistical
information regarding the courts and court systems' current staffing,
training activities, and caseloads, and did not seek any attitudinal
or subjective responses. Thus the agency itself was the reporting
unit, with the respondent required only to be in a position to provide
accurate, reliable information.

Citation

Bureau of Social Science Research, Inc. National Manpower Survey, 1973-1976. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 1992-02-16. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR07675.v1

Geographic Coverage

Time Period(s)

1973 -- 1976

Date of Collection

1975 -- 1976

Data Collection Notes

A number of variables with undocumented codes are
included in the data files and codebooks. Extensive search efforts
failed to recover these code values. As much information as is known
about the variables has been included in the documentation.

Sample

(1) Part 2: The small police department chiefs' survey
consisted of a 20-percent sample of all general purpose police
departments serving jurisdictions with a 1970 population less than
17,000. (2) Part 3: Stratified random sampling was used to obtain the
sample of chiefs of large sheriff departments. (3) Part 4: A sampling
of 3/13 of small sheriff departments was used. (4) For the other eight
surveys, because of the small size of the universe and lack of
adequate data on which to base stratification decisions, censuses were
conducted.

Universe

Chiefs of police of both large and small departments,
sheriffs of both large and small departments, chief prosecutors, chief
defenders, court administrators, wardens of adult correctional
facilities, directors of juvenile correctional facilities, and chief
probation and parole officers, as well as general and appellate
jurisdiction courts in the United States.

Data Source

mailback questionnaires

Data Type(s)

Original Release Date

1984-03-18

Version Date

1992-02-16

Version History

1984-03-18 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

Standardized missing values.

Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

Notes

The public-use data files in this collection are available for access by the general public. Access does not require affiliation with an ICPSR member institution.

The citation of this study may have changed due to the new version control system that has been implemented.